It all started when I wanted to turn my fireplace on from my TV remote…

Automatic Remote Car Windows – DIY

In this project we explore how to add automatic window control for a relatively cheap price to your car. I have a 2003 civic and due to its age it doesn’t have any of these features built in. It has one touch auto down for the driver window, like many cars. But I wanted auto down and auto up like luxury cars of its period. I also wanted to roll my windows up, or down, from my car’s remote/key fob. Many cars these days in the mid to high price range come with both of these features stock. Not only are these upgrade cool, but they’re useful. For one, just being able to hop out of my car, and hit lock and know that my windows will be up on their own is nice. Also on hot sunny days it’s nice to be able to crack the window an inch or two, or drop them down all the way as I approach to let the car air out.

A pleasant side effect of doing this project is it turns all of your driver side window switches into one touch auto up and auto down switches. The passenger switch will still work but won’t be automatic. IF you wanted the passenger side to be automatic, you would have to run a pair of wire from it, back to this DIE530t control unit.

The install is pretty simple so don’t let the instruction manual fool you. Follow the tutorial posted below. One issue with this guy’s tutorial is he decided to pop the door panel and wire this unit closer to the wires at the switch panel and motor. Although this is easier as far as figuring out which wire is which, ultimately it is completely unnecessary. When you open your door and look near the hinges you will see a black rubber tube going from the door to your car. This tube or hose contains all the electrical wiring going to your door panel. If you see my point here you will realize you can wire everything up under your drivers kicker panel behind the steering wheel. All you have to do is find where those wires coming in from that tube goes, and which wire does what. These wires are in a harness that just clips into a connector. That is where you should wire everything from. However popping the door panel to initially trace the wiring is probably the easiest thing.

If you try this project and want to get your door panel off, do yourself a favor and invest in a panel popper. You can get these at your local automotive store, they’re cheap, and because they’re purpose built for doing just this very thing, they work like magic. It’ll look something like one of these on the right.

If you’re too cheap or impatient to get one of these, you can use a butter knife, but you’ll probably break a few tabs. But at the end of the day the door panel will probably go back on fine. They put more tabs than required for a solid fit.

My last bit of advice is instead of tying into an existing 12v source found under your dash, run a wire from the battery. You might already have a wire if you have a subwoofer/speaker amp or a carpc. I found that when I tied into an existing power source, it wasn’t delivering enough amperage, and in cold weather the window motor was under powered.

4 comments on “Automatic Remote Car Windows – DIY”

Anybody thought of a rain sensor mod for automatic windows? It would be nice to leave windows cracked during hot days but if a sudden shower comes, the windows would close. I’d like to use some kind of sensor attached to inside of windshield that would detect raindrops and automatically roll up windows.